A collective long-term documentation of the rapidly melting Morteratsch glacier in the Swiss alps. Connecting to the glacier’s body with its manifold textures and resonances, finding sonic intimacy.

The audiovisual research project Melting Landscapes reveals the inner sounds and textures of the Morteratsch glacier in Switzerland. We collectively used underwater microphones to record crevasses, glacier puddles and the ice of the glacier tongue. In this process, sounds became audible that were not perceivable from the outside with bare ears: melodic squeaking, clicking and rattling, gargling and gurgling, hissing and fizzing, deep droning. Numerous sounds of microscopic melting processes, repeatedly interrupted by large ice blocks breaking off.

The recordings have been published as a record with a photo book, as spatial sound installations, and as a concert series in dialogue with musicians. The project seeks to provide a new perspective on glaciers in the face of global heating. The bodily experience of the melting process with all its liveliness allows an intimate connection to an elusive phenomenon. In sound, one can experience the microscopic scale from which the climate catastrophe takes its course. The microscopic glacier sounds make the all-encompassing impact of capitalist societies in the natural world tangible, offering an embodied and intimate knowledge of our crisis.

Released as a Vinyl album with photo book, 2018.